Kirjahaku

From the winner of the 2022 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize: a fractal exploration of a woman's grief as she moves through disjointed segments of time. Divided Island is the story of a woman with a neurological disorder. The day she goes in for the encephalogram that will lead to her diagnosis, she finds herself splitting in two. One of the two women she becomes decides to travel to an island to take her own life; the other remains behind. Scenes and images real and imagined gradually coalesce into the story of a life told from a singular location: a way of perceiving and describing the world, guided by cerebral dysrhythmia. Written in scraps and fragmented chapters, Divided Island is a nonlinear narrative best read as a poetic experience, in which the protagonist's memories and dreams recompose the world and, in doing so, trouble the very notion of the self. This slim volume makes it abundantly clear why Daniela Tarazona belongs in the company of other Sor Juana winners like Valeria Luiselli, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Almudena Grandes.

With a precise and visceral style, Daniela Tarazona presents the clinical course of a radical mutation--a change whose physiological symptoms emerge from a more intimate evolution. After the death of her mother, Irma decides to take a plane and hole up on a faraway beach. Through the course of her grief, the protagonist's body, her instincts, and her perception, begin to experience a transformation as unexpected as it is natural. The skin over her joints become thick and scaly, her eyes take on a yellow gleam, and she spends more and more time bathing in the hot sun. In these pages, Tarazona manages to address the perennial literary theme of metamorphosis, without relying on simple fantasy or didactic symbolism. More than a fable or a supernatural diversion, The Animal on the Rock is a profoundly biological and introspective novel with universal resonances.